“No, he didn’t. He wanted to know if it was all true, what she had just told him. At first he said it was silly, that he didn’t believe her and that they’d see about it; but when he realized that the others were going to come back, he was afraid it would turn against him and he remembered he had things to do. Things to do! We know what kind of things. So you know what she said? ‘Don’t do too many things,’ she said, ‘or you’ll wear yourself out!’”
“Oh…what did that mean?”
“Oh, you know, that meant that he might still run into him: she meant the car and everything else.”
“No!”
Wallas is sitting facing the front of the car, next to the window; there is an empty seat to his right. The two voices-woman’s voices, with uneducated intonations-come from the seats behind him.
“She wished him ‘Good luck!’ when he left.”
“And did he run into him?”
“No one knows yet. Anyway, if he met him, there must have been a rumpus!”
“I’ll say.”
“Well, we’ll find out tomorrow, I hope.”
Neither woman seems to have any special interest in the outcome of this matter. The people in question are neither relatives nor friends. It is even apparent that the existence of the two women is unrelated to this kind of story…but such people enjoy discussing the glorious events in the lives of great criminals and kings. Unless it is simply a story in the serial published by some paper.
The streetcar, after following a winding route along the somber buildings, reaches the central part of the city whose relative prosperity Wallas has already noticed. He recognizes the Rue de Berlin, in passing, that leads to the prefecture. He turns around toward the ticket taker, who is supposed to tell him when it is time to get off.
The first thing he notices is a bright red sign with a huge red arrow over the words:
For drawing For school For the office
VICTOR HUGO STATIONERY SHOP
2, Rue Victor Hugo
(One Hundred Yards to Your Left)
Quality Supplies
This detour takes him away from the clinic; but since he is not in any particular hurry, he turns in the direction indicated by the arrow. After having turned-following the instructions of a second sign-he discovers a shop whose ultra-modern exterior and elaborate advertising indicate a recent opening. Its elegance and its great size are surprising, moreover, in this small, rather isolated street which is located, nevertheless, not far from the main boulevards. The shopfront-plastic and aluminum-is brand new and if the left-hand window contains only a rather ordinary display of pens, note paper, and school notebooks, the one on the right is designed to attract the attention of pedestrians: it represents an “artist” drawing “from nature.” A dummy, dressed in a paint-spotted smock and whose face is hidden under a huge “bohemian” beard, is hard at work in front of his easel; stepping back slightly to see both his work and the model at the same time, he is putting the finishing touches on a carefully drawn landscape-which must actually be a copy of some master. It is a hill with the ruins of a Greek temple among cypress trees; in the foreground, fragments of columns lie scattered here and there; in the distance, in the valley, appears a whole city with its triumphal arches and palaces-rendered, despite the distance and the accumulation of buildings, with a scrupulous concern for detail. But in front of the man, instead of the Greek countryside, stands instead of the setting a huge photographic reproduction of a modern city intersection. The nature of this image and its skillful arrangement give the panorama a reality all the more striking in that it is the negation of the drawing supposed to represent it; and suddenly Wallas recognizes the place: that house surrounded by huge apartment buildings, that iron fence, that spindle-tree hedge, is the corner of the Rue des Arpenteurs. Obviously.
Wallas walks in.
“Well,” he exclaims, “you certainly have a strange window!”
“It’s interesting, isn’t it?”
The young woman greets him with a low, throaty laugh.
“It certainly is strange,” Wallas admits.
“Did you recognize it? Those are the ruins of Thebes.”
“The photograph is particularly surprising. Don’t you think so?”
“Oh yes. It’s a very fine photo.”
Her expression actually indicates that she sees nothing remarkable about it. But Wallas would like to know more:
“Yes, indeed,” he says, “you can tell it’s the work of an expert.”
“Yes, of course. I had the enlargement made by a laboratory that specializes in such things.”
“And the shot had to be extremely clear too.”
“Yes, probably.”
Already the saleswoman is looking at him with a professionally friendly expression of interrogation. “Can I help you?”
“I’d like an eraser,” Wallas says.
“Yes. What kind of eraser?”
That’s just the whole point, and Wallas once again begins describing what he is looking for: a soft, crumbly gum eraser that friction does not twist but reduces to dust; an eraser that cuts easily and whose cut surface is shiny and smooth, like mother-of-pearl. He has seen one such, a few months ago, at a friend’s but the friend could not tell him where it came from. He thought he could find himself one of the same kind without difficulty, but he’s been searching in vain ever since. It looked like a yellowish cube, about an inch or two long, with the corners slightly rounded-maybe by use. The manufacturer’s brand was printed on one side, but was too worn to be legible any more: only two of the middle letters were still clear: “di”; there must have been at least two letters before and perhaps two or three others after.
The young woman tries to complete the name, but without success. She shows him, with mounting discouragement, all the erasers in the shop-and she has, in fact, a splendid stock-whose respective merits she warmly extols. But they are all either too soft or too hard: “breadcrumb” erasers, as easily kneaded as modeling clay, or else dry and grayish substances which abrade the paper-good at best for getting rid of ink blots; the rest are pencil erasers of the usual kind, more or less elongated rectangles of more or less white rubber.
Wallas hesitates to return to the subject that is plaguing him: he might seem to have come in for the sole purpose of obtaining God knows what information about the photograph of the house, without even being willing to spend the money for a little eraser-preferring to turn the whole shop upside down over an imaginary object attributed to a legendary brand whose name he could not even remember-and with good reason! His strategy would soon appear for the foolish thing it was, since by giving only the middle syllable of this name he kept his victim from questioning the existence of the brand.
He is therefore going to be obliged, once again, to buy an eraser he will not know what to do with, since it is not, apparently, the one he is looking for and since he does not need any other-despite certain resemblances-than that one.
“I’ll take this one,” he says. “It may do the trick.”
“You’ll see, it’s a good one. All our customers are satisfied with it.”
What’s the use of explaining further? Now he must bring the conversation back to…But the farce goes so fast that he scarcely has time to think: “How much do I owe you?” the bill taken out of his wallet, the change ringing on the marble… The ruins of Thebes…Wallas asks:
“Do you sell reproductions of pictures?”
“No, for the time being I have only post cards.” She points to two revolving stands. “If you’d like to look: there are a few museum paintings; all the rest are views of the city and its environs. But if you’re interested, there are a few that I took myself. Here, I made this one from the shot we were talking about just now.”
She takes out a glossy-print post card and hands it to him. It is the one that was used for the window. Besides, it shows in the foreground the paving stones that form the edge of the quay and the end of the railing at
